But He's Intimidated!

A friend of ours (let’s call her Maggie) recently ran into a work crush at a bar.

They have a flirtatious history (and one semi-drunken makeout), but he was acting strange and distant at the bar. Maggie’s other friend had a solution. “He’s intimidated by you!” she said. “You need to approach him!”

This is something girls tell each other all the time. He’s not returning your texts? He’s intimidated! He hasn’t called about a second date? He’s afraid! He’s being weird at the bar? You’re too intimidating!

But these same girls get annoyed when the short, questionably underage GW frat boy comes up to them at bars and acts like he’s way out of their league. They think, “Can you believe he thinks he can get with me?"

Yes. We can. Because when it comes to (the opposite) sex, if it’s one thing most guys aren’t, it’s easily intimidated.

And when they are intimidated, they’re really good at hiding it.

Maybe it’s spray-painted on the showers in every boys locker room, but for whatever, reason, guys seem to learn pretty early on that the best way to get a girl is to act like you’re out of her league.

Guys know how to fake a cocky persona, and if they aren’t talking to you, it’s probably because they don’t want to. Not because they’re intimidated.

Case in point: we later learned that Maggie’s crush had pulled an all-nighter at work that week. He was really tired and ending up going home at 11:30.

He wasn’t necessarily ignoring her because he wasn’t interested, but it wasn’t because he couldn’t muster up the courage.

We’re all much more active in our pursuits of things we aren’t sure we can get. That’s why we spend hours preparing for interviews for our dream jobs and ten minutes browsing the Web site of the NoVa company that’s hiring interns. And that’s why you go to the happy hour for your cute coworker who might have been flirting with you in the lunchroom, but wish the guy who wrote you a love poem on Missed Connections would just get the hint and stop calling already!

When a girl thinks a guy is intimidated, her first instinct is usually to assure him that she’s a sure thing. But that destroys your game, and usually your chances with him.

So the next time a guy ignores you, ignore him back. It’ll get you a lot farther than confessing your love for him.